Other Household Toxins by Christopher Allen

I’m actually teaching a workshop at the UK Flash Fiction Festival in June on expansion in flash with my fellow editor Helen Rye. But for some flash writers it’s also a challenge to write longer flash-length stories. I think you have to find a situation that moves you, the right moment and something profound about that moment-and then of course you need to have a feeling for compression and urgency. I tried cramming these stories into novels and screenplays for a while before I found the perfect fit of flash fiction.ĭistilling a narrative into a few hundred words is an incredibly challenging task – how do the best flash fiction writers manage this? At graduate school, my professors told me my essays sounded like stories. I was always going to be both.įate? When I was songwriting, people kept telling me my songs sounded like stories. Thank you so much for these interesting questions. Is writing your first love, or do you have another passion? Allen is also a self-described nomad – and it was an absolute pleasure to catch up with him in a conversation where we discuss the craft of flash fiction, the publishing scene in general, as well as some excellent writing advice to anyone looking to launch their own literary careers and get their writing published. His work has appeared in The Best Small Fictions 2019, Booth, PANK, Indiana Review, Split Lip Magazine and lots more. That’s because we’ve caught up with a flash fiction legend in Christopher Allen – editor-in-chief of SmokeLong Quarterly, one of the longest running (and perhaps most well-known) online journal dedicated to flash fiction.Īlongside his work with SmokeLong, Allen is the author of the flash fiction collection Other Household Toxins (Matter Press, 2018). If you’re new to the world of flash or desperate to learn more about this exciting writing form, you’re in for a treat. When done well, these miniature stories can transport readers to far off realms and pack emotional sucker punches that leave you reeling. These mini narratives, stories that fit neatly in your pocket and can be read in the same amount of time it takes to smoke a cigarette, offer writers the chance to hone their ability to write precisely and concisely – condensing whole plots into the space of a few hundred words.

‘Flash’ fiction is many things short, difficult to categorise, easy to read but so much harder to write. Christopher Allen – editor of Smokelong Quarterly

Other Household Toxins by Christopher Allen